AIM + Maura -> Snarky Comments About Others’ Research
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
As I’m sitting here watching my Interpersonal Comm. students take an exam today (update: something which I’m still doing), my friend Maura pops up in my IM window with a question. She was wondering as to the validity of this particular study (warning: not in English), and more specifically, this arstechnica article citing it. Here’s our conversation, which is more or less me hurriedly constructing a generalized argument against the ability of quantitative research to address complex problems like this. I’ve not read the actual article, so I strategically steer clear of, you know, making claims about its actual content, just its reception, and the model used to collect data.
Filed under: ego-trip Gentleman Reg grad school Idolator Maura Pitchfork research Super Furry Animals
Elsewhere, here’s me on Gentleman Reg’s Arts & Crafts debut Jet Black, and me on the new SFA song “Inaugural Trams.”
I don’t want to be too picky, but most of what we would consider “good journalism” is a result of a journalist’s qualitative research project, even if it’s not conceptualized that way.
But I see what you mean about quantitative research produced sound-bite-sized statistics, i.e. that articles about studies are never about qualitative studies.
A little pickier: I don’t see why a researcher couldn’t settle on some operational definition of “piracy” as a set of behaviors and administer survey items about those behaviors. I do think that the best way to settle on what those behaviors should be would be to use qualitative methods. Once you’ve gotten a finger on the pulse though, you can quantify away.
A very good study of people’s downloading habits, whether “legal,” “illegal,” “paid,” or “pirated,” would probably require both qualitative and quantitative methods (like most great studies of poorly understood phenomena).
That’s a nice addition to my dashed-off post, Jordan. I’m always one for methodological bricolage–triangulating survey results with in-depth observations.
I recently read a dissertation on music circulation in India, and there was an insightful ethnographic chapter on everyday considerations of music’s value. It taught me a lot about how people *use* music in their everyday lives, in ways that don’t have anything to do with market value. The other thing: it also doesn’t really come to a clear point–more like several points, and points that can’t easily be summarized. The researcher spread around surveys, but bounced those answers off his own observations.
Of course, that could also mean “bouncing one set of (quanitative) biases off another set of (qualitative) biases.” So yeah.
Good point. In our (however far) postmodern world, it seems like presenting as many biased perspectives as possible is our shot at triangulation.
I should also add that there’s no indication that the questions these researchers were asking were in fact ethnographic ones, and that I don’t hold them responsible for not having ethnographically-sound data as a result.